After careful reading of the Core Book on calculating treasure amounts for your PCs, I determined the following:
At level one, the average wealth of a core class PC is 115 (I averaged the classes.) I subtracted this from 1000, then multiplied by 4 (number of PCs) to get 3540 as the total amount of treasure they should earn before hitting second level.
Then I went ahead and calculated the cost of all the treasure items in "Eulogy for Rosalar's Coffer" that the PCs would get before level 2. I got a staggering 9257 gp worth of treasure. I calculated the bead of blessing as costing 600 gp and the potion of Cure moderate wounds at 300 gp each. I calculated the wand of create water at 6300 gp. I probably screwed up here because...
The treasure earned by the PCs in Paizo's core product is astronomical compared to what I determined my PCs should be earning. What am I doing wrong?
Wand of Create water should be worth 350gp.
The price of a wand is equal to the level of the spell × the creator’s caster level × 750 gp.
0-level spells are treated as being 1/2 level.
I believe Paizo places treasure on the assumption that the PCs will miss a sizable fraction of it. So if they carefully explore every nook, expect them to go significantly over WBL.
Also; consumables will get used and not contribute as much to wbl over the long haul.
I did consider the PCs missing treasure when I read the sections in the book. Most of the treasure in this volume actually doesn't require a perception check. The awesome sword requires a STR CD 14 to retrieve, which I thought most martial characters could make without problems.
I keep WBL on an excel spreadsheet and then divide the total amount of wealth by the number of players, and then compare it to the WBL on this page WBL. Then I know if they've gotten too much or too little and can adjust accordingly.
I totally forgot about the decrease in value of selling things, thank you very much for reminding me. I do like my low-level consumables.
When I read the rod of create water, I thought it would be create food and water, so I way overpriced it. We're in the city working for the university, so I'm quite familiar with arcane cantrips, divine not so much. The wand is actually worth about half the stated amount, as it only has 28 charges.
Thank you everyone for the great responses! I'm off to build a few treasure caches, as I'm apparently a bit cheap with the loot.